Keto FAQ

Can I do lazy keto and not track my food or count my macros?

There are plenty of people who do “lazy keto” and don’t track their food or count their macros. Garrett religiously counts and tracks his but I do not. I don’t think this works for everyone and I truly believe that in the beginning for at least the first 30-60 days you should be tracking and counting macros. There are a lot of hidden carbs in things that you wouldn’t think about that could be stalling your weight loss.
It can seem like a lot of extra work but find an app and let it do most of the work for you! We personally use My Fitness Pal on our phones and since you can scan barcodes of items and 99% of the time they are already entered in there it really is pretty quick!

What do you use to track your macros?

My Fitness Pal! It’s the only app I’ve used. I’m sure there are others out there that work just as well or maybe even better but this one works for me!
Make sure you mess around with it and see all of the features it has to make your keto journey easier. We don’t pay for the premium version and I really don’t think that you need to.

Definitely play around with it, use the recipe builder to make new recipes, save your meals so it’s easy to add them again and you’ll find that after the first two weeks or so it’s much quicker in the beginning!

I absolutely hate tracking my food but I’m just lazy and made it work in the first 6 months or so. 🙂

Do you have to drink a protein shake?

Nope! Garrett drinks IsoPure and has tried several different flavors and has liked them all. He quite often gets the chocolate flavored one and adds it to his coffee in the morning.

I have tried all sorts of protein shakes over the years and have never found one that I could choke down. I lost my first 60 lbs without having a single protein shake so you certainly don’t need to find one that’s keto friendly and that you like. If you do like them you should check out IsoPure though.

After doing keto for 8 months I randomly found Premier Protein and I’m in love with their shakes! I prefer the bananas and crème and the peaches and crème but I do know people who get the caramel and vanilla and add it to espresso shots for their morning coffee. I also love that they are premade and I can just throw one in my purse to have later if I’m going to be out and about. I’m not a breakfast person at all so I’ve been having one every morning on my drive to work. Super convenient and actually tastes good too!

How do I start Keto?

I really wish there was a super easy answer for this but every time someone asks me I have a hard time explaining. There is no right or wrong way to start. Just start counting your macros, eat 20 net carbs or less per day, make sure you’re drinking water, getting salt in to try and avoid/minimize the keto flu, and avoid any “cheats” for at least the first two weeks. It’s really that “simple”. I’ve tried a lot of diets in my life and this one seems the hardest to start but it’s actually been the easiest for me to follow! Don’t be afraid, just jump in, make mistakes, learn from them, and keep going!

Is keto safe long term?

We are not doctors so if you are worried you should consult your physician and go from there. We have spoken with ours and with my two auto-immune diseases this way of eating works well for me. I have NEVER felt better in my life.

Garrett has high blood pressure and this has worked wonders for him as well.

I’d say if you are worried or have concerns do your own research with your doctor and see what you come up with!

What do you eat every day?

This is probably the number one question I am asked when people are interested in starting a keto diet and I have a hard time answering it. We still eat pretty normal things and we don’t eat the same exact things every week.

Breakfast during the week is usually just a protein shake for us because neither of us are morning people so we don’t get up in enough time to make anything.

On the weekend you’ll find us eating eggs, bacon, French toast (YEP! There are some pretty decent low carb breads out there!), scones, egg scrambles with bacon and sausage. All pretty normal things!

Dinner usually consists of a meat, veggie and salad. I can almost always just take a recipe I want to eat and make it keto. In the beginning we ate very “easy” meals but once you get going you’ll quickly figure out how to substitute things to eat what you like just the keto way.

Snacks are some of the same things I eat for lunch along with almonds, pecans, string cheese, mug cakes, brownies, Jell-O whips, celery and peanut butter, and very very rarely some halo top ice cream.
This list is certainly not complete but it’s a good starting point for you. Check out some of the recipes we’ve posted and hopefully it’ll give you some good ideas of what you can make!

Is Keto expensive?

I don’t think so! If you know me at all you know that I’m a pretty good shopper so I have figured out the best places to buy some of the more “expensive” items and some of those things are a splurge for us and we limit how often we buy them. In saying that, our grocery bill has actually gone down since we’ve started this way of eating!

Click HERE for a list of some of the products we buy on Amazon because we’ve found for the quality and price it’s the best option but most of our items we buy from Target and a very select few from Walmart. You could probably get most of everything from any grocery store but I’m partial to Target. 🙂

I think the biggest thing is that we rarely buy anything processed and mostly stay on the outside aisles and we shop sales! Quite often Target will have coupons on their meat and we always stock up when that happens. Very rarely will I pay full price for meat anymore. If you do shop at Target make sure you are using their cartwheel app to save even more! Just last week they had our favorite peanut butter in the app for 25% off so I bought extra to stock up.

Do you have cheat meals and if so how often?

The keto diet is not a diet for us but a way of living. We don’t plan on stopping this journey and in saying that there’s definitely times where we go to events where we can’t eat keto and we don’t stress about it. There is never going to be a time where I tell you that I will never eat French fries or a burger with a bun again.

However, in the beginning we rarely cheated and if we did it was one meal and back on keto. I don’t recommend cheating every weekend. It brings back the cravings and it is harder to get back on track when you are continually throwing yourself out of ketosis.

We aren’t perfect people… Just two normal people so sometimes the cheat meals get out of hand so we’ll set a goal and commit to not having a single cheat meal for a month or so. This always works to getting us back on track and we’ve both been successful with losing weight even if it does get slightly out of hand.

Hopefully this post has answered some questions for you and feel free to comment if you have any more and we’ll do our best to answer them!